Peter Dreier: ACORN Under The Microscope Page 1 of 4 The Huffington Post July 16, 2008 This is the print preview: Back to normal view » Peter Dreier BIO Become a Fan Get Email Alerts Bloggers' Index ACORN Under The Microscope Posted July 14, 2008 | 08:26 AM (EST) stumble digg reddit del.ico.us news trust Read More: Acorn , Acorn 8 Million , Acorn Attorney General Scanadal , Acorn Embezzle , Acorn Embezzlement , Acorn Housing , Acorn Radio , Acorn Scandal , Acorn Wage , Acorn Wages , Bertha Lewis , Bertha Lewis Acorn , Dale Rathke , David Iglesias , Financial Justice Center And The Living Wage Resource Center, In Justice David Iglesias , Kabf , Knon , Rathke Acorn , Wade Dale Rathke , Wade Rathke , Wade Rathke ACORN , Off The Bus News Show your support. Buzz this article up. Share Print View Comments By Peter Dreier and John Atlas For 38 years, ACORN, the nation's most successful community organizing group, has been making headlines by mobilizing low- income Americans to fight for social justice, challenging powerful banks, corporations, and government officials around such issues as wages for the working poor, predatory lending and foreclosures, welfare reform, public education, affordable housing, and voting rights. But the story about ACORN in last Wednesday's New York Times is one headline that the group was hoping to avoid. The right-wing blogosphere is abuzz over the article, which reported that an ACORN staff-person embezzled almost $1 million from the organization's coffers eight years ago. (The aggregate budgets of ACORN and its affiliate organizations back then totaled about $41.5 million). ACORN immediately established new internal controls to put the organization's financial house in order. But ACORN's founder and chief organizer, Wade Rathke, covered up the incident in order to protect the wrongdoer, his brother Dale, who at the time was the group's chief financial officer. Even worse, he kept his brother on the payroll until June 2, although he was long before removed from having any responsibility for the group's finances. Only a handful of top ACORN staff knew about the scandal, and Rathke persuaded them to keep it quiet in order, he argued, to protect the group's reputation. The staff group obtained an enforceable restitution agreement so that the funds would be returned to ACORN. With the help of friends and family, his brother has now repaid all the stolen funds. But now that the scandal has surfaced, Wade Rathke has resigned, and his brother has been fired. In the world of scandals, ACORN's missteps don't even register on the radar compared with the swindles perpetrated by top executives at Halliburton, Enron, WorldCom, Countrywide, and other major corporations who ripped off the government, stockholders, and consumers of billions of dollars. But progressive groups have to be squeaky clean. They must live by a higher standard, in part because they are constantly under scrutiny by powerful business and government officials and in part, because http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter -dreier/acorn -under -the -microscop_b_112491.html?view=print 7/16/2008 Peter Dreier: ACORN Under The Microscope Page 2 of 4 they depend on the good will of funders (who typically get federal tax breaks for their donations) and low-income members (who sacrifice to pay ACORN dues). The 59-year-old Rathke is a brilliant organizer and political strategist. He founded ACORN in Arkansas in 1970 and built it into an effective vehicle for mobilizing poor and working class people for economic justice and political reform. ACORN and its affiliates have an annual budget of over $100 million, over 1,000 employees, and nearly 500,000 dues-paying families. In addition to chapters in 103 cities in 38 states, ACORN's family of organizations include two union locals, two non-profit southern-based radio stations (KNON and KABF), several publications (including the magazine Social Policy), a nonprofit group that builds affordable housing and provides homeownership counseling (ACORN Housing), a nonprofit law office, and a variety of other vehicles that supported its direct organizing and issue campaigns, such as the Financial Justice Center and the Living Wage Resource Center. ACORN has won victories at the local, state and national levels that have improved living and working conditions for those who are usually left out of the corridors of power. Over the years, ACORN's success on a wide range of issues has depended on staking out progressive stances, mobilizing poor people, especially its dues-paying members, on issue campaigns, and enlisting allies among liberal funders, unions, faith groups, and politicians. In the wake of the Times story, ACORN's leaders are working to keep its reputation among its allies and funders. But Rathke's misjudgment in covering up his brother's embezzlement has now provided ACORN's opponents with ammunition to attack the organization. Indeed, because it has been so successful for almost four decades, ACORN has accumulated many enemies -- including major business groups and conservative politicians that have done battle with the feisty activist group -- who would love to see the organization destroyed. In recent weeks, right-wing opponents have even tried to link Barack Obama to ACORN, which they invariably describe as a "radical" and "left -wing" group. (See here , here and here .) With so many chapters, ACORN is making news every day in cities around the country. Even as the New York Times was reporting on the Rathke scandal, ACORN's organizing continued. That week, the Times itself wrote about ACORN's successful campaign to save 5,881 rental units of working class housing in Brooklyn. The Las Vegas Review-Journal and the Orlando Sentinel reported on ACORN's local voter registration drive. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette recounted an ACORN demonstration at a local bank, with members blowing whistles and chanting "Criminal offenders, predatory lenders." The Dallas Morning News reported on ACORN's campaign to expand health insurance in Texas, while dozens of papers highlighted ACORN's key role in a new national coalition of unions, consumer and religious groups to fight for universal health care. The New Orleans Times- Picayune described ACORN's ongoing work to rebuild homes in the Lower 9th Ward neighborhood battered by Hurricane Katrina. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill pushed by ACORN that will help desperate California homeowners avoid foreclosure. A Connecticut paper described ACORN's counseling program that helped homeowners save their houses, and local media in Tucson, Arizona reported ACORN's campaign to pressure local officials to adopt a law to prevent unfair lending practice. There are thousands of nonprofit groups around the country that help the poor. Some provide charity and social services. Others advocate on their behalf. And some organize the poor to fight for themselves. But in the community organizing world, ACORN stands almost alone as a national force, with its local chapters, dues-paying members and an ability to wage and win major reforms at the neighborhood, city, state and national level. ACORN organizers have taught tens of thousands of low-income Americans how David can sometimes defeat Goliath. Since its founding, ACORN has mobilized poor and working class people to pressure governments, corporations, hospitals, and other institutions to clean up vacant lots and turn them into parks, put up stop signs to prevent children from getting killed, improve public schools, help families buy an affordable home and prevent foreclosures, and provide access to health care. It has registered millions of voters. In New Orleans, ACORN, more than any other grassroots organization, has saved the Lower Ninth Ward from extinction. ACORN has played a leading role in building the "living wage" movement, working with unions, faith-based groups, and other community and civil rights organizations to help lift the working poor out of poverty. There are now more than 150 cities and counties with these ordinances, despite the opposition of the local and national business groups. These laws set a minimum wage -- one to five dollars an hour higher than the federal threshold -- for businesses that receive city contracts, tax abatements or subsidies. In Chicago, for example, ACORN had to overcome Mayor Richard Daley's opposition to pass a living-wage law that now applies to firms that receive $50,000 or more in city subsidies. ACORN's Financial Justice Center has negotiated settlements with several large private corporations -- including Citi-group, Household Finance and H&R Block -- that had a history of discrimination or predatory lending. The settlements resulted in borrowers saving several billion dollars a year and benefiting from $636 million in one-time payouts. ACORN sponsors several magnet schools in New York. It has provided leadership and organizing power for New York's Working Families Party, which has played a key role in the city's progressive politics. ACORN's story is remarkable because the organization has succeeded and flourished in the most conservative of times, in the face of intractable odds, at a time when America's poor was largely invisible. But ACORN has hardly been invisible, especially to powerful groups that have clashed with its grassroots activists. Not surprisingly, ACORN has been subjected to vicious attacks from business lobbyists, conservative politicians, and right-wing media. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter -dreier/acorn -under -the -microscop_b_112491.html?view=print 7/16/2008 Peter Dreier: ACORN Under The Microscope Page 3 of 4 During the late 1980s and early 1990s, ACORN endured years of an expensive and time-consuming federal grand jury investigation instigated by President George H. W. Bush's Department of Labor, alleging that ACORN was "too close" to a progressive labor union -- SEIU's Local 100 -- that was its partner in organizing the working poor.